Recipe - Pears With Creamy Rice Pudding Old Dutch Styl

PEARS
4 Cooking pears
One half l Water
40 g Sugar
1 teaspoon Vinegar
1 Stick of cinnamon (*)
Piece of lemon peel (just
the yellow part, the
white is too bitter)
1 teaspoon Potatoflour (or other kind
to thicken the juice that
keeps it clear)

RICE
2 One half dl Milk
2 tablespoon Rice (the type to make
ricemilk)
1 Grated peel of 1 melon
again, just the yellow bit
2 Sheets of gelatine (*)
1 tablespoon Vanilla flavoured sugar (*)
2 tablespoon Sugar
1/8 l Whipping cream

Peel the pears, leave the stem on (looks nice). In a pan, bring the water,
pears, cinnamon and lemon peel to a boil. Stew for 3 One half hours. Bring back
to a boil. Put the potatoflour in a cup and add a little water, stir. Stir
it bit by bit into the boiling pear stuff until set to the thickness of
sauce. Let boil for another few minutes. (Remove the cinnamon stick if you
prefer). Put rice, milk and lemon grating into pan and boil for 30 minutes.
Soak the gelatine in a generous amount of (cold!) water for 10 minutes
until soft. Squeeze the water out of the gelatine and add the gelatine to
the rice mixture (TAKE THE PAN AWAY FROM THE STOVE). Don't boil it again!
The gelatine will not set and it tastes yukky. Add the vanilla sugar and
the regular sugar. Let it cool down. Whip the cream until stiff. Work the
cream into the rice mixture carefully using 2 large spoons. Cool again.

Serving suggestion: Reheat the pears until just warm. Serve them on the
side with the rice pudding. Pour some of the pear juice over the pudding.
Enjoy!

(*) Stick of cinnamon: you *could* replace it with powder, but it
won't taste the same (*) In the Netherlands we use sheets of gelatine. If
you add up the
volumes of the ingredients i'm sure you can work out how much
clear (no taste) gelatine powder of your own you should use. (*) If you
don't have vanilla flavoured sugar, use regular and add
some vanilla flavouring. Or even better: add a cutopen vanilla
pod to the rice mixture while cooking. Scrape out the black centre
and add to the pudding after cooking.

IMHO this recipe seems very little for 4 servings. The rice pudding can be
rather heavy though. If you make it for visitors, just make sure to make a
double portion, just in case they want seconds! And rice pudding is even
better the next day. Cooking pears can also be eaten cold.

From Gemini's MASSIVE MealMaster collection at www.synapse.com/~gemini